Little Things That Are Making Me Miserable

Facebook. I tried to FB a while ago and couldn’t stand the… er… level of discourse. Maybe it’s the people I know, or else FB reduces everyone to the lowest common denominator. I wasn’t jealous of anyone I friended, quite to the contrary. Every time I looked at my damn wall, I saw people broadcasting to the Universe that they are going to CVS to buy toilet paper — or some such. A few couples’ PDA made me wonder about the fragility of their relationships.

Trying to decide whether to take my daughter to a Goth production of Prokofiev’s Cinderella is making me miserable. I’m not a big fan of sanitizing tales, but I’m just not sure a 5-year-old enjoy this particular version. I suspect the production is geared to grown children. It’s only natural that choreographers are catering to hipsters in a city where they outnumber kids.

Smokers don’t make me miserable. The ill effects of second hand smoke are vastly overblown, and I really don’t mind when people next to me have a cigarette or two. What I can’t stand are the power trippers out to get smokers. The formerly libertarian state of Oregon might actually pass a bill that would make cigarettes prescription only drugs. I feel like hugging every smoker in this country of ours because when the smokers are gone, who’s next?

While outlawing tobacco, Oregon, many observers agree, is likely to legalize cannabis in the near future. Here, in Cali, those on the hip side spent the last couple of decades joking that pot is now more socially acceptable than tobacco. I’m sure this must be the case in both Washington and Colorado where recreational (what other kind is there?) marijuana is now legal. And what do you know, CO is introducing a bill to set a limit for driving stoned. It turns out that:

There’s a lot of pressure on lawmakers after legalizing pot. As the number of users grows, there is growing concern the number of people driving under the influence will as well. In 2011, the most recent data available, 13 percent of deadly crashes in Colorado involved pot.

13%? Wow! I recall the totally scientifically justified reasoning for legalization I heard all through my youth, that drunks do stupid things, like getting getting behind the wheel wasted, but stoners are just too mellow to get their tushies off their couches and therefore don’t drive intoxicated.

No word on how many accidents are caused by motorists impaired by tobacco.

I’m proud of my home town on occasion. Last week, the one hometown paper that can tolerate me reading its pages printed a front page story about the effort of some goofy homegrown group to get the hometown Big 5 to stop selling the dreaded “assault weapons”. Ours being a former navy town, the paper’ve heard from a few locals, including one reader who pointed out that the paper got all gun specifications wrong. The paper retorted:

No one on the Sun’s editorial staff owns or ever has owned a gun. Officials at Big 5 did not respond to calls to clarify details about their merchandise.

So, basically, because they don’t know a certain subject they don’t possibly need to research it. Hicks.

Another individual wrote on the subject of the grocery bag ban:

Cloth and canvas bags are the “ugly ducklings” of (reusable) shopping bags (“Treat Reusable Bags Like Dirty Laundry,” Jan. 17). They don’t hold their shape, being floppy. I can imagine people just throwing them away when they get too dirty.

“We” will wash our own bags. Oh, but of course, what about the many who don’t? Our food could get indirectly contaminated from someone else’s dirty bag, could it not?

Good questions. If we can’t trust our fellow citizens to put their used plastic bags in a waste basket, we certainly can’t trust them to wash their cloth bags. Lets legislate.

The dashing good looks of Democratic women had long been the subject of discussion of the right-wing blogosphere. I hope my discussion of the sublime get-ups of Michelle Obama can be considered a humble contribution to the genre. Do take a look at a representative specimen at Viking the Kitten blog. EBL has Lena Dunham and Legal Insurrection — Jennifer Granholm. I find all of these ladies hilarious, but my readers might prefer to plaque their eyes out rather than click at the links above.

OK, not everybody is blessed with good looks. But lets not go out of the way to make ourselves ugly

In any event, here is some news to cheer them up: universities are cutting assistant professors’ hours to comply with Obamacare which said professors enthusiastically endorsed. No doubt they thought they’d benefit from Obamacare. Remember when Pelosi promised that once O’care is signed into law, everyone can, like, stop worrying and join a band. The sub-professorship class might know about brown nosing, which, to be sure, is an important skill in academia. However, they seem to poorly understand how political power works in this country — or the world — or how the economy works. Do you trust them to educate your children?

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How about ‘perfume. The snowflakes of our world faint at the very sniff and then rush off and make it illegal. Of topic, did you know that Coco Chanel was an actual paid up nazi? And her longest lasting lover was a member of the Gestapo?
I discovered this after I had purchased a bottle of Chanel #5. Which I still wear. But still.

Oh. I used to work with a woman (a really nice one, by the way) who at the tender age of 50 discovered that she’s allergic to perfumes. There must be something about the Bay Area air that makes people allergic to things.
OMG, I had to google it about Chanel, I had no idea. Still, a great designer.

I had read about the Oregon bill. Thing is, states don’t really want their smokers to stop because they need that cigarette tax revenue. What is most irritating about Oregon is their speed limit – 60 or 65 – and everybody seems to drive it!

While outlawing tobacco, Oregon, many observers agree, is likely to legalize cannabis in the near future. .

So, pot smokers will end up with COPD. Will ObamaCare pay for that?

As for the way that women with portly bodies dress, well, I’ll say this: I’ve been portly, and I knew better than to dress in such a fashion. Can’t these women look into a mirror and make an objective assessment?

I agree. I suspect chronic pot smokers will develop other issues as well. Just look at the old potheads — there is obviously something wrong with them. Not so old potheads lack motivation. The drug is poorly studied, and we don’t quite understand how the brain works anyway, but we really don’t need to be able to explain it in scientific terms to reach the conclusion that the habit comes at a cost. But whatever. This should be the addict’s problem, not the taxpayer’s.